My Year of the War eBook

Darkness found all the survivors among the P.P.s in
the support and communication trenches. The fire
trench had become an untenable dust-heap. They
crept out only to bring in any wounded unable to help
themselves; and wounded and rescuers were more than
once hit in the process. It was too dangerous
to attempt to bury the dead who were in the fire-trench.
Most of them had already been buried by shells.
For them and for the dead in the support trenches interred
by their living comrades, Niven recited such portions
as he could recall of the Church of England service
for the dead—­recited them with a tight
throat. Then the P.P.s, unbeaten, marched out,
leaving the position to their relief, a battalion
of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Corporal
Christy, the bear-hunter, had his “luck with
him.” He had not even a scratch.

Such is the story of a hard fight by one battalion
in the kind of warfare waged in Europe these days,
a story only partially told; a story to make a book.
All the praise that the P.P.s, millionaire or labourer,
scapegrace or respectable pillar of society, ask is
that they are worthy of fighting side by side with
Mr. Thomas Atkins, regular. At best, one poor,
little, finite mind only observes through a rift in
the black smoke and yellow smoke of high explosives
and the clouds of dust and military secrecy something
of what has happened many times in a small section
of that long line from Switzerland to the North Sea.

Leaning against the wall in a corner of the dining-room
of the French chateau were the P.P.s colours.
Major Niven took off the wrapper in order that I might
see the flag with the initials of the battalion which
Princess Patricia embroidered with her own hands.
There is room, one repeats, for a little sentiment
and a little emotion, too, between Halifax and Vancouver.

“Of course we could not take our colours into
action,” said Niven. “They would
have been torn into tatters or buried in a shell-crater.
But we’ve always kept them up at battalion headquarters.
I believe we are the only battalion that has.
We promised the Princess that we would.”

In her honour, an old custom has been renewed in France:
knights are fighting in the name of a fair lady.

XXV
Many Pictures

A single incident, an impression photographic in its
swiftness, a chance remark, may be more illuminating
than a day’s experiences. One does not
need to go to the front for them. Sometimes they
come to the gateway of our chateau. They are
pages at random out of a library of overwhelming information.

One of the aviation grounds is not far away.
Look skyward at almost any hour of the day and you
will see a plane, its propeller a roar or a hum according
to its altitude. Sometimes it is circling in practice;
again, it is off to the front. At break of day
the planes appear; in the gloaming they return to
roost.